A continuation of the previous post;
I think I picked this up at the
Plastic Warrior show, back in the Spring, but 2024! Several Blogs I follow have mentioned it, I think some have play-tested the rules, I may never even read it, but feel I should buy war gaming books in the same way I buy card-game books, so they are there, in the library, 'just in case'. So long as there's a contents page and/or an index, you can always find something if you need to!
Both the '
Discovering' series, and
Shire Albums are a useful source of information, and blissfully succinct! Obviously they become rather irrelevant once fuller or more worthy tomes are published, but as primers, they are just the ticket.
Book collecting is a mild periphery interest of mine, plastics have always had a place, and earlier works benefit from details lost to modern research/websites, particularly some of the early trade-names of plastics, and I addressed to better points of board-game books in the previous post.
This was free on World Book day, although 'free' is a moot point when there's a minimum purchase involved, and I don't think I met the threshold, so paid a nominal amount for it! A box-ticker, it adds nothing to the oeuvre, but joins the other dozen or so works on
Lego.
Again, box-ticking really, how many times can you teach people the techniques published in things like The Eagle, which
we looked at here, and which was issued more than half a century ago? Also, it was not cheap, but I saw it, I felt it needed to go in the library, which has a modelling section, as it has sections on Wargaming, Flags & Heraldry, Chess &etc.
Also, new materials and tools come along all the time, and a book like this, although promoting one company's products, often has a useful appendix or two, or maybe a glossary, so in the pile it went!
Two more
Discovering pamphlets, I tend to get a few every time I visit the second-hand bookshop over in Alton, in part to support one of the few decent second-hand bookshops left in this part of the world, and also because there were so many issued, there's always another to find!
I love maps, have done ever since I was a kid making them with friends, in the woods near Bramshill, while the wagon one will join the three I already have on farm & military hoarse-drawn equipment and horse-furniture.
I usually only buy doll or doll's house books when I see them cheap, it's not my field, so I'm only getting them for completeness, for anything they may have on another side of toy manufacturers (more the doll books, than the house books), and again; glossaries, indexes and appendices.
The book which influenced and indirectly led to the first in this post, and something which - by it's absence - had been an obvious gap in the library, so, box ticked! The Wikipedia page is interesting, and without being able to check, I think this is the '77 reprint.
Bear books are a bit like doll books, but this ex-library copy was cheap as chips in a charity shop, so an easy decision, and it's actually quite an interesting read on the histories/stories of several specific bears, I was also surprised to see some of the prices
AbeBooks (with none on
Amazon) ask for it, but it has a following;
This was given to me by John Begg, and it is a very odd thing, it's a kids' history/primer on
Matchbox cars and 'modern' die-casting, by a famous children's author/illustrator of travel books in the 1950's and '60's. A sort of early advertorial, but quite entertaining nevertheless, and with several other works on
Matchbox in the library, will fill a gap I didn't know was there!
Adrian had a small pile of these at the last Sandown, so the latest addition to the pile, and a nice, light read, well illustrated and a part of that sudden shower of books and websites about 20-years ago on all things medieval and toy, both soldiers and castles, I have one or two of the books I think, with one to find (the big book on castles), and remember the websites, which have disappeared now, with the passing of the authors. Sadly, nothing lives forever.
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